musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

    • About
  • Does the love of heaven make one heavenly?

    Why do find myself so attracted to articles about religion? I am not an adherent -religion does not stick to me- nor am I tempted to take the famous wager of the 17th century philosopher, Pascal: dare to live life as if God exists, because you’ve got nothing to lose if He doesn’t, and everything…

    gozzter

    December 16, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Alain de Botton, BBC Future, Catholicism, Charon, Christianity, Constantine, Edict of Milan, Edict of Thessalonica, God, Hinduism, Karl Marx, Linda Woodhead, Pascal’s Wager, polytheism, religion, Sigmund Freud, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, the River Styx, Theodosius, University of Lancaster, Voltaire
  • Is the thing translated still the thing?

    When I was a student at University, translated Japanese Haiku poetry was all the rage; it seemed to capture the Zeitgeist of the generation to which I had been assigned. I was swept along with others by the simple nature images, but -much like the sonnet, I suppose- I failed to realize how highly structured…

    gozzter

    December 9, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Alison Anderson, Haiku, literature, Mark Polizzotti, metaphrase, Muriel Barbery, paraphrase, poetry, Rilke, Rumi, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translation, translators
  • To hold, as it were, a mirror up to Nature

    Who am I? No, really -where do I stop and something else begins? That’s not really as silly a question as it may first appear. Consider, for example, my need to remember something -an address, say. One method is to internalize it -encode it somehow in my brain, I suppose- but another, no less effective,…

    gozzter

    December 2, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Alan Watts, aphids, bacteria, boundaries, Derek Skillings, growth, identity, individuals, individuation, microbiome, reproduction, Shakespeare, skin, symbiosis, University of Pennsylvania
  • Wast thou o’erlook’d, even in thy birth?

    That Age can do some funny things to the mind seems fairly obvious. The accumulation of years, brings with it a panoply of experience that, hopefully, enables a kind of personalized Weltanschauung to emerge -things begin to sort themselves on the proper shelves, and even if they remain difficult to retrieve, there is a satisfaction…

    gozzter

    November 25, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Age, Alison Stone, birth, David Albert Jones, Kahlil Gibran, Lancaster University (UK), mortality, natality, preconceptual reality, The Soul of the Embryo
  • Virtues we write in water

    I’ve only recently stumbled on the concept of virtue signalling. The words seem self-explanatory enough, but their juxtaposition seems curious. I had always thought of virtue as being, if not invisible, then not openly displayed like chest hair or cleavage. Perhaps it’s my United Church lineage, or the fact that many of my formative years…

    gozzter

    November 18, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Macquarie University in Sydney, Neil Levy, Shakespeare, virtue, virtue signalling
  • Whodunnit?

    Popular opinion to the contrary, it seems to me that there are advantages to cultural naïveté -well, literary innocence, at any rate. Being seduced into a novel or short story solely because of the reputation of the author, or the ravings of a friend, risks disappointment -if only in your friend’s lack of sophistication. And…

    gozzter

    November 11, 2020
    Uncategorized
    anonymity, authors, classic Latin literature, classic literature, cultural naïveté, false news, graffiti, Homer, literature, Nero, Octavia, public media, Roman literature, social media, the Iliad, Tom Geue, University of St. Andrews in Scotland, vox dei, vox populi, writing
  • Fire burn, and cauldron bubble

    I love it when I hear a new word, wrestle with a new concept. Pyrocene -don’t you adore it? Even just sounding it out quietly in your head, it’s  hard to miss the excitement, or the imagery. It takes its shape, as with all great epochs, by combining two Greek words, pur (or pyro), meaning…

    gozzter

    November 4, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Anthropocene, Arizona State University, biotic matrix, climate, Fantasia, fire, Fire Age, fire-animal, Goethe, Holocene, hominids, Paul Ducas, Pleistocene, Pyrocene, Stephen J Pyne, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice
  • How much do warnings help?

    Is my skin becoming too thick? Too insensitive to those things I want to feel? Need to feel? Or has it merely developed callus over areas too frequently assailed? These are questions that I’m beginning to ask as I notice the burgeoning warnings on virtually every television channel that whatever follows may not be suitable…

    gozzter

    October 28, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Christian Jarrett, coddling, communication, Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind, trigger warnings
  • Like madness, is the glory of this life

    My grandmother was old when she died -very old, in fact: she died on the morning after her 100th birthday party. Her congratulatory letter from the Queen -or at least someone official claiming to speak for her highness- came the day before. I’m not so sure it was congratulations, really -more a recognition that a…

    gozzter

    October 21, 2020
    Uncategorized
    Age, Dementia, letter from the Queen, memories, Muireann Irish, University of Sydney
  • More sinned against than sinning

    I’ve already written about the problem of creepiness and fear in another essay,  citing the 2016 study from Knox College in Illinois by the psychologists Francis McAndrew and Sara Koehnke (Can We Forget the Taste of Fear?) but there is another form of creepy that is less -what?- entertaining: when we judge people (usually men)…

    gozzter

    October 14, 2020
    Uncategorized
    creepiness, disgust, First reactions, Francis McAndrew, Heidi Matthews, King Lear, Knox College in Illinois, Osgoode Hall, Sara Koehnke, York University
Previous Page
1 … 28 29 30 31 32 … 75
Next Page

Blog at WordPress.com.

    • About
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • musingsonwomenshealth.com
    • Join 337 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • musingsonwomenshealth.com
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar